If you want to see just how far Hollywood has come in terms of dealing
with interracial friendships and love affairs, you need look no further
than Will Smith's latest film, "Hitch."

In this romantic comedy, Smith plays a self-styled expert on
relationships who pursues a gossip columnist, played by Eva Mendes. Smith
is African-American; Mendes is Latina. Not one mention is made of the
couple's racial differences.

In addition, "Hitch" gives Mendes' character a white brother-in-law and
Smith's character a white best friend (played by Michael Rapaport). Again,
the screenplay treats these relationships as perfectly commonplace.

But for many years, interracial attraction was a taboo subject at the
box office. A movie like "Hitch" would be unimaginable in the 1930s, '40s
or '50s, when the vast majority of black actors in films were playing
servants, stablehands or Tarzan's neighbors -- characters whose love lives
were off-screen, if they existed at all.

Few filmmakers would have dared to create a love story that crossed
racial lines. One who did was director Frank Capra, who made "The Bitter
Tea of General Yen" in 1933. Set in China, the film focuses on Megan
(Barbara Stanwyck), an American missionary who is imprisoned in the exotic
estate of Chinese warlord General Yen (Nils Asther). Over the course of
time, Megan and Yen develop a respect for each other that slowly gives way
to a mutual attraction.

The movie is light on erotic content, and the romance, such as it is,
wraps up unhappily as Yen, faced with defeat, frees Megan and drinks a cup
of poisoned tea to commit suicide.

But the mere suggestion of what used to be called "miscegenation"
caused "Bitter Tea" to become a hot potato. "They found a love they dared
not touch!" the advertising proclaimed.

"The women's clubs came out very strongly against it," Stanwyck
recalled in Joseph McBride's book "Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of
Success," "because the white woman was in love with the yellow man and
kissed his hand: So what! I was so shocked (by the reaction). It never
occurred to me, and I don't think it occurred to Mr. Capra when we were
doing it. I accepted it, believed in it, loved it."

Moviegoers, however, rejected it, and "Bitter Tea" was a financial
failure.

This was a time in which even interracial friendships were a rarity on
screen -- one notable and often overlooked exception was in producer Hal
Roach's "Our Gang" comedies (shown on television as "The Little Rascals"),
in which black and white children routinely worked and played together.

Passing in 'Life'

In the pre-civil-rights era, many movies that dared to discuss race at
all were built on the idea of "passing," in which light-skinned blacks
pretended to be white. While some of these films were garden-variety
exploitation (with titles like "I Passed for White," in which half-black
Sonya Wilde marries into a wealthy white family without revealing her
background), others were classier productions.

Take, for example, the 1934 "Imitation of Life." Adapted from Fannie
Hurst's once-controversial novel and nominated for a best-picture Oscar,
this slick soap opera follows the troubled lives of Delilah Johnson
(Louise Beavers), who is black, and Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert), who
is white, as they try to raise their demanding daughters, Peola and
Jessie.

The women meet by chance and realize they're in similar circumstances:
Both are single parents with money troubles. So Delilah offers to keep
house for working woman Bea in exchange for room and board. Although the
two are friendly, the relationship has all the trappings of master and
servant: Delilah calls Bea "Miss Bea" and massages Bea's tired feet when
she comes home from work. When Bea needs help getting her storefront fixed
up, she doesn't ask Delilah -- she orders her to help. Delilah obediently
grabs a bucket, rags and cleanser and starts scrubbing, singing hymns as
she works.

"Passing" fuels much of the melodrama in the story, as haughty,
fair-skinned Peola refuses to accept her race. Delilah accidentally
humiliates Peola when she meets up with her at school and finds the child
has been passing. When Bea finds out about the mother/daughter strife, she
suggests Delilah enroll Peola in a different school, apparently so that
the girl can continue posing as white.

Years later, Bea will advise Delilah to "send Peola to one of those
good colleges in the South -- for colored people -- where she could finish
her education and she wouldn't be faced with this problem of 'white' all
the time." Ever-obedient Delilah tells petulant Peola to "go amongst your
own. Quit battling. Your little head's sore now from butting against stone
walls."

There's no mistaking the moral of "Imitation": Blacks may be
second-class citizens, but blacks who try to pass are doomed to even
greater humiliation and heartbreak. Peola finally rejects her mother and
tries to make a new life for herself without revealing her race. After
Delilah's untimely death, Peola returns home, a shattered soul who must
now live in shame to pay for her deception.

It would be fascinating to hear what Fredi Washington, the stunningly
lovely actress who plays the adult Peola, thought of this finale.
Offscreen, this green-eyed, light-skinned black actress resisted the
temptation to pass for white herself; she reportedly went so far as to
darken her skin with makeup when she performed opposite Paul Robeson in
"The Emperor Jones." In later life, Washington became a civil rights
activist and head of the Negro Actors Guild and was inducted into the
Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975. She died in 1994.

Remake of 'Life'

While viewers might excuse the attitudes in "Imitation of Life" as
outdated ideas from 70 years ago, the 1959 remake of "Imitation" offers
distressingly little proof that thoughts about race relations changed very
much over the course of 25 years. In fact, if anything, the remake is even
more simplistic than the earlier film.

Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), this version's Delilah, is still
subservient to her "friend" and housemate Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) --
whom she always makes a point of calling "Miss Lora" -- and this time
around, the black character is nothing but household help, brewing coffee,
doing laundry and looking after her light-skinned daughter, Sara Jane, and
Lora's child, Susie.

The plot is reasonably similar to the earlier film, although there is
one notable difference: This "Imitation" touches on the issue of
interracial romance, as a teenaged Sara Jane (played by Susan Kohner, a
real-life Caucasian who earned a best-supporting-actress Oscar nomination
for her fiery performance) passes as white and gets involved with a local
stud (played by Troy Donahue). When he learns the truth about Sara Jane,
he beats her mercilessly in a startling scene.

Another story of passing

A more serious-minded attempt to face the problems of crossing racial
lines is the 1949 drama "Pinky," directed by Elia Kazan, whose previous
film "Gentleman's Agreement" had focused on anti-Semitism in America. The
title character of "Pinky" is a fair-skinned nurse (played by white Jeanne
Crain) who went north to get her education and finds nothing but trouble
when she returns to her grandmother's cabin in the bayou of an unnamed
Southern state.

Grandmother (Ethel Waters) is happy to have Pinky back, but she
suspects the young woman has been up to something during her time in
nursing school: She knows Pinky's been passing. "You know I never told you
to pretend you is what you ain't," Grandmother says. "Shame, shame be on
you, Pinky, denying yourself like Peter denied the good Lord Jesus."

Still, Pinky is between two fires: If she passes, she risks her
grandmother's wrath, but if she admits she's black, she faces the scorn of
the white community. Pinky is accosted by two boozy goons who first speak
politely to her when they think she's white, then nearly rape her after
she tells them she's black.

"Nobody deserves respect as long as she pretends to be something she
isn't," Pinky's elderly patient, Miss Em (Ethel Barrymore), reminds her.
That sends Pinky into a rage: "What should I do, dye my face? Grovel and
shuffle, say 'yes'm' and 'no'm'?"

Director Kazan addresses the topic of interracial love, as midway
through the film Pinky is reunited with the white doctor who was her lover
while she was in school. She later sends him away after he urges her to
return to the North with him and continue passing.

Although "Pinky" was both a critical and a commercial hit -- it won
Oscar nominations for Crain as best actress and for Waters and Barrymore
for best supporting actress and grossed $4.2 million at the box office
(equal to $70 million at today's ticket prices) -- it's not a terribly
brave piece of work. In its stand on race relations, the film is not very
far removed from "Imitation of Life" and "The Bitter Tea of General Yen":
Pinky has lied about her racial identity and must pay for her deception by
devoting her life to charity. And the movie's finale seems to suggest she
thereafter lives a life of celibacy.

The film's final shot shows Pinky in front of a house she's inherited,
which she has converted into a school for black nurses and a day-care
center. She rings a bell to call the children inside, then stands looking
heavenward, proud of her achievement but, as her expression indicates,
just a little sad, too.

Pinky's story might have ended quite differently a few years later,
when the civil rights movement began gathering steam and a black actor
such as Sidney Poitier was finally allowed to form genuine friendships
with white characters in "The Defiant Ones" and "A Patch of Blue" and to
have romantic interests in such films as "A Raisin in the Sun," "Paris
Blues" and, of course, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."